President Isaac Herzog (Amos Ben Gershon Israel’s GPO)
President of Israel Isaac Herzog personally visited the Negev Bedouin town of Rahat, located near the Gaza border, to offer his condolences for those Bedouin who were murdered in Hamas’ barbarous terror attack on October 7. Bedouin are Arabs, but they accept Israeli sovereignty and serve in the IDF.
At the same time, in an interview with French television, President Herzog slammed UN Secretary General António Guterres for his comments saying the Hamas attack did not happen “in a vacuum.”
Hamas does not distinguish between Jews and Arabs when it murders innocent people.
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While in Rahat, President Herzog met with heads of Bedouin authorities and with the families of Bedouin kidnapped and murdered on October 7.
President Herzog said he went there to, “embrace and offer strength to the Bedouin community that paid a heavy price in the massacre and kidnapping of civilians by Hamas. Women, men, children, as well as members of the community serving in the security forces were brutally taken in the war. We came to offer comfort to the bereaved families, and offer support to the families of the hostages.”
“We sympathize from the bottom of our hearts with the mourning of the entire Arab public and the Bedouin society in particular,” he added. “Dear sons in the Bedouin society were murdered, innocent people were murdered, people for no wrongdoing, people who worked, who traveled, who were at home, and were slaughtered just like the Jews who were slaughtered.”
President Isaac Herzog went on to say that Israelis will all continue to live together and that it was important for him to tell the Arab-Israeli community Israel how much he appreciates “the responsibility and the continued functioning of their community society in these difficult days, but we must remember -the struggle is really not a struggle of a political nature. It is about our abilities to live here in a Middle East of peace versus a Middle East of bloodshed and war. This is the essence of the concept. After all, it made no sense to enter a kibbutz Hulit and slaughter the [Bedouin] Ziadana family who have been working there for years.
“What we saw on October 7 does not represent Islam,” declared President Herzog. “Islam is a religion with a lot of respect, sensitivity, brotherhood and love. It represents an unimaginable evil that needs to be eradicated.”
And on Wednesday, President Isaac Herzog,), gave an interview to the French news channel BFMTV in which he said, “I absolutely reject the words of UN Secretary General Guterres. The problem with the conflict is terror.”
Guterres told a special session of the UN Security Council held on Tuesday about the war in Gaza, “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.”
President Isaac Herzog explained that Secretary General Guterres’ remarks were a “sort of implication or even consent for atrocities, for terror. The problem with the conflict is terror. The most inherent problem that derails the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians has to do with terror.”
He stressed: “There is a civilization out there, of ISIS, of Hamas, of Al Qaeda – and all of these organizations, the Houthis, all they want is basically to swarm, to conquer the Middle East, to get the Jews out, and next will be Europe, you have to study their philosophy. This coalition of evil starts in Iran. It has forks all over the Middle East. This is their life their lifelong vision, and they’re using the most brutal means possible, atrocious means that we never believed we would see following the Holocaust, that we will see them in modern times.”
“We didn’t want to go to war,” added President Herzog. “We do not want to be warmongers. We are simply protecting and defending our people. And on 7th October in the morning, there was a war waged at us, at Israel and its people, and we have to protect and defend ourselves, first and foremost, to take the capabilities of Hamas out of the homes of people in neighborhoods, underneath the ground and above ground with a huge amount of weapons, dangerous and lethal weapons, and make sure that people can go on with their lives. Perhaps it will also help the Palestinians in Gaza to take control of themselves and live in prosperity in the future.”
